Exile

by Akhilesh

  ‘I’ve just had some,’ Brihaspati said.

  ‘This is Bahugunaji, a journalist.’ Pandey introduced Brihaspati and Bahuguna to each other and said, ‘This is Sampoornanand Brihaspati – a great scholar and chairman of the tourism directorate.’

  The two said they knew each other.

  ‘You people work under the same roof.’ Pandey smiled at Suryakant and Sampoornanand.

  ‘Not for the last few days.’ Sampoornanand said, ‘But we’ll be together again from tomorrow onwards.’

  ‘Exactly. He is just like my son. I can’t be happy if he is unhappy and resentful. At least not in India.’ Pandey said to Sampoornanand. ‘I had told you that Suryakant is searching for the village of my ancestors, and now I am his ancestor.’

  ‘I remember. I wanted to tell him to rejoin that very day. When I failed to contact him, I passed on the request to his wife.’

  The mystery of Sampoornanand’s altered behaviour was now becoming clear, but another question begged asking – why was Sampoornanand so impressed by Pandey? Suryakant was curious.

  ‘How did you meet each other?’ It was not Suryakant but Bahuguna who posed the question. He considered himself closest to Pandey in India and did not like Sampoornanand’s amity with Pandey. ‘What brought you two together?’

  ‘The great Hindu culture,’ Pandey replied. Suryakant and Bahuguna stared at each other in shock but Pandey continued, ‘It was in Varanasi – the city of Baba Vishwanath – the oldest city, Kashi, poised on Lord Shiva’s trident. The morning newspaper lay before me. I read the report of the approval of the Satyug project by the cabinet, and felt as if Baba had never gone to Surinam. In fact, Baba has been wandering on this land for thousands of years.’ Pandey paused to think, and his voice grew heavier when he began again, ‘I felt that I too was born in this land, but my body had detached from my consciousness and had turned up at Surinam.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Bahuguna asked.

  Something like fear crawled inside Suryakant. The fear that one felt when one imagined a ghost in childhood or when one passed through a deserted stretch of land.

  Sampoornanand was masticating on the paan masala, gazing at Pandey.

  ‘I thought I too should join the Satyug yajna. I found Sampoornanandji’s number on the internet and talked to him. He advised me to join this PPP project. I said, “No. I am too old for business, but I do have a lot of money. A part of it can implement the Satyug vision.” He took me to meet with chief minister that very morning.’

  Suryakant heard everything but he did not listen, as it was in his student days – when he learnt many new words, but did not understand their meaning or else ascribed the wrong meaning to them. Today, the difference was that he was hearing all the words, but was blocking the meaning from coming across to him. It can’t be ascertained whether his treatment of the statements of Pandey and Brihaspati was a sort of private protest or if he was really sick of both of them. Finally, he decided he would stay physically in the room and dispatch his mind elsewhere. He would build a wall against Pandey and Brihaspati. But the two possessed enough material time stored over their years, the mass of which swelled in the room through the medium of their voices.

  Suryakant realized that it was not easy for his mind to break out. It is hard to exist and vanish simultaneously. He discovered another option: he wanted to cloak the actual scene in the room with an imaginary one. To usher in other voices via his imagination, he tried to quieten the chorus of Pandey and Sampoornanand. In fact, in spite of Bahuguna accompanying him, he found himself unarmed, alone and routed, yearning to find a way for revitalization. In the process, he transferred imaginary but exciting scenes and sounds from the anti-world of Sultanpur and Gosainganj. Consequently, now in this room, an imaginary one started emerging, there were not four but six persons. The fifth was Chacha who had put up his feet on the centre table and was enjoying cucumbers, watermelons and green gram. The sixth was Jagdamba Prajapati, farting like a machine gun. The eyes, wrinkles, voice and the gravity of age that lay on Jagdamba’s forehead not only defied Pandey and Sampoornanand, but were also capable of slamming them down.

  Suryakant’s two mental warriors performed their duties well. They neutralized Pandey’s and Sampoornanand’s oratory, gestures, stature, palace, and the armed guards posted outside. All their strikes were futile and were destroyed midway by the capricious Chacha and the missiles of Jagdamba’s farts.

  Finally, the battle ceased. Sampoornanand was saying, ‘Okay, Pandeyji, I’ll take your leave now.’ He stood up and said, ‘I have brought a few books for you.’ He gave a set of his books to Pandey.

  ‘Thanks a lot for everything.’

  ‘You can say it later,’ Sampoornanand chuckled. ‘We’ll be meeting all the time. I’ll receive my thanks during one of those meetings.’ He believed he had spoken something quite funny. Pandey broke into a guffaw to humour him.

  Suryakant and Bahuguna looked at the departing Brihaspati. From the back it appeared that a starched, ironed, white set of kurta and pyjamas was walking away.

  The invitees to the other scene, Chacha and Jagdamba, had departed after proving their worth. Now only three persons remained.

  ‘Bagugunaji, how is your paper doing? You should publish news favouring Satyug in the coming issues,’ Pandeyji advised him.

  Bahuguna was really annoyed. He felt slighted and cheated by Pandey. The friendlier Pandey was to Sampoornanand Brihaspati, the farther he found himself flung. He was so terribly hurt that in spite of remaining silent, he had abused them in his heart and had decided he would expose the corrupt Satyug project in his newspaper. So when Pandey asked him to publish favourable news regarding the project, he felt as if his body was going up in flames, and he felt like yelling at Pandey. What he said was, ‘Sure, it’s easily done.’ He implored, ‘Ask me to do something big.’

  Suryakant looked at Bahuguna.

  Bahuguna was pandering to Pandey. ‘When I came here, you had gone out. If you have something important to do, ask me – why do you take the trouble?’

  ‘Oh, my personal presence was necessary there.’

  Pandey smiled so Bahuguna took the liberty of asking, ‘Where did you go?’ He wanted to find out as a journalist.

  ‘Hauli.’

  Bahuguna was surprised but Suryakant was not impressed.

  Pandey took out pouches of native hooch from a bag and said, ‘You won’t touch it.’

  ‘Yes, sir. This is not our preferred brand,’ Bahuguna replied like a gentleman.

  ‘I too don’t drink it now.’

  ‘Why then?’ Bahuguna dug further.

  ‘After I last spent the evening with you two, I have been buying this native liquor every day since then to offer it to my Baba.’

  ‘Why don’t you drink it?’ Bahuguna asked.

  ‘Because I’m afraid,’ he said without pretence. ‘The very next day after meeting you people, I read in the newspaper that this liquor is contaminated and people can turn blind after consuming it. They can also die.’

  ‘Then you must not offer it to Baba either.’

  ‘We offer oleander to Lord Shiva, but we don’t take it ourselves. It is the same with me and Baba – he is my god. I offer native liquor to him, but I don’t touch it.’

  Bahuguna suspected that Pandey had already downed a few pegs and was talking inanities because he was tipsy. He tried to confirm his doubt by sending an SMS to Suryakant. At that very moment the SMS tone sounded twice on Suryakant’s mobile.

  Suryakant saw that the messages had been sent by Shibbu and Tendulkar. He understood their essence without reading. When he read them, he realized he’d been right: both were highly emotional, imploring him to plead their cases to Pandey. He glanced at the words as if they had been posted by strangers or by some teleshopping agency.

  He thought about the terrible curse and how he had been disillusioned by both the new and the old! Both were unbearable. On the one hand, there were ripened men like Sampoornanand
and Pandey, and on the other, the young Shibbu and Tendulkar. It was as if two distinct pairs were stalking him. And his defence was that his affection for them had vanished. He felt that an infinite and dense region of boredom had generated in him, no smaller than the entire world.

  A little while ago, he had created a mental scene to usher in two warriors, Chacha and Jagdamba Prajapati. Were his detachment and revulsion also two virtual warriors he had created just because he was squirming in his loneliness? Then, questions started surfacing incessantly: would he rejoin the tourism directorate? Would he go for the last rites of his Dadi in Sultanpur? Would Pandey accept the results of his search for Baba’s village and his kin? Had he lost Ma, Babuji, Nupoor, Shibbu, and everyone forever or would time mend the breach in relationships? He had a number of questions, but he failed to find any enthusiasm within himself to find an answer.

  ‘Whatever relationship there is between you and liquor, God and oleander, Baba and the native hooch,’ Bahuguna said to Pandey, ‘as far as I am concerned, I am a Unitarian with regard to the connection between the drink and the drinker.’

  Suryakant and Pandey appreciated Bahuguna’s appealing idea.

  ‘Unitarian in the sense that a drinker should drink so much liquor and in such a way that at one point, the distinction between the drink and the drinker should dissolve; they should become one. He should feel that each element of his identity, rather each atom of the cosmos is nothing but liquor. This world is nothing but wine.’

  Pandey looked charmed by Bahuguna in the same manner he had appreciated him in America. ‘Bravo!’ Pandey enthused. ‘We’ll have drinks in this very spirit, Bahugunaji.’ He added, ‘But before we commence our programme, we should get down to business. You understand, I mean Suryakant’s report on Gosainganj …’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Bahuguna slid to the edge of the sofa and said, ‘We must talk about the report. Then we can visit Gosainganj. I’ll cover your journey in an entire page and will endeavour to telecast this unique occasion live on all the important channels.’

  Pandey appeared pleased. ‘Sampoornanandji suggests that the entire village should be spruced up in the style of the closing years of the nineteenth century. The villagers should wear period costumes, jewellery and use agricultural implements from that time; houses should look like the huts from that era and folks from seven villages should join in a vast feast, serving dishes that were popular then. The day I enter Gosainganj, I’ll try to look like my Baba in the group photograph.’

  ‘It will be quite difficult – almost impossible.’ Suryakant’s voice was clear.

  Pandey laughed. ‘I get what you mean. How can an old man become young? Even the greatest make-up artist the world cannot lend the gleam of a youth’s skin and eyes into mine.’ He looked sad. ‘How easy it is to present a young man like an old person and how tough is the reverse! Impossible.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bahuguna said. ‘We can at least decorate Gosainganj in the style as it must have looked when Baba left.’

  ‘Not at all. It won’t be proper.’ Suryakant did not relent.

  ‘Why?’ Pandey’s question smacked more of the arrogance of a challenge than curiosity.

  ‘Because when Baba left Gosainganj, there was a drought and we would have to fake it in the village. You will have to prepare several cremation grounds where the pyres of people dead from starvation and sickness would be blazing. There should be lifeless cattle lying around, and each house should echo with the wails rising from death and mourning,’ Suryakant said vehemently. ‘Those were difficult times when Pandeyji left this country as a girmitiya mazdoor.’

  ‘Oh, Baba!’ Pandey looked anxious, ‘My Baba endured unspoken troubles!’ He braced himself and said, ‘The wheel of time is now moving at a different pace now. A lot of people today are migrating to foreign countries, but perhaps this is the happiest period for the nation.’

  Suryakant fell silent. Once again, he slipped into the state of indifference where there was nothing but detachment and tedium. The vigour that had suffused his voice, the boiling, had cooled down.

  Bahuguna was worried about his mental state. He tried to normalize the situation and draw Suryakant out. ‘We should focus right now on Suryakant’s report.’

  ‘Of course!’ Pandey sounded eager.

  Suryakant stared coldly at Pandey and pulled out his laptop from the bag.

  Pandey stood up. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Where?’ Bahuguna asked.

  They passed through a door of the room into the inner part of the building, there was a lift in the lobby. Pandey took them up to a room that consisted of a handful of snug chairs as well as an elegant table. There was a big screen on the opposite wall.

  ‘We shall behold Baba’s – my own village – Gosainganj, on this large screen,’ Pandey said, growing slightly emotional.

  The first picture was that of Jagdamba Prajapati at the pradhan’s door. Suryakant had not noticed it in Gosainganj: flies spun all around Jagdamba. At a few points on his skin, flies sat with their heads together and Jagdamba was not shooing them off, perhaps because they posed no threat to him.

  Suryakant saw again what he had seen earlier, but even the closest encounter may not reveal all the facts. There was always much that was still hidden, beyond expression – in the pictures, scenes and the narratives that appeared on the screen. Suryakant realized he had overlooked a lot. For instance, a few persons, objects and incidents loomed on the screen that he had not actually perceived fully. The words and the sounds too. At one point, Suryakant was astonished to see Jagdamba’s palms – three of the fingers of his right hand were partially severed. Was it due to a surgery or had they been hacked off? Incised or chopped?

  Each wound and each scar has its own untold narrative and past. The mutilation of the fingers was strange indeed – however, one may say this about ordinary things – most of the innumerable, ordinary happenings of the world are observed and heard time after time and still they do not form part of history, recollection or report. Look at the dust-covered potter’s wheel on the screen, the utensils in the food stores of the pradhan and Jagdamba’s, the cattle’s eyes, the bark of trees, tricks and brawls; listen to the variation between the breathing of a child and that of an old person; note innumerable other things as many times as you wish, still your perception will remain incomplete.

  Pandey looked at some of the pictures twice or thrice. He listened to several statements time and again. The presentation took a lot of time because they had to halt repeatedly and return to the earlier ones and then move ahead once again. And if Pandey thought that some scene was related to an earlier one or the beginning, he asked for a rescreening. At long last, it was over and the lights were switched on and the screen went blank: Pandey was wiping sweat off his neck with his handkerchief, even in the air-conditioned room.

  ‘So, this is the quest for my ancestors.’ Pandey’s words were without feeling. His voice was neither warm nor cold. Neither keenness nor apathy.

  ‘Yes, sir, this is the quest.’ Suryakant sounded unconcerned. He demonstrated no curiosity or eagerness for Pandey’s approval, joy or encouragement.

  Bahuguna sighed deeply.

  Pandey spoke haltingly, ‘All this might be true but there is one issue that bothers me and that is …’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve not been able to prove how a Brahmin turned into a Kumhar or how the ancestors of a Kumhar were Brahmins.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Pandeyji dropped the handkerchief on his right knee and said, ‘I mentioned this to Sampoornanand Brihaspatiji …’

  ‘What did he say?’ Bahuguna’s question was scornful.

  ‘He concurred,’ Pandey said, making an effort to remember. ‘He says it is impossible in for a Brahmin to turn Shudra or a Shudra to turn Brahmin. There are numerous legends, folktales, songs, tomes, opinions, magic, fantasy and miracles but none of them have the Shudra and the Brahmin interchanged. A Brahmin can tr
ansform into a tree or into a rock; he has become an animal, demon, mountain, river – everything – but never into a Shudra! Such a marvel has never occurred.’

  ‘What then?’ Bahuguna appeared defeated.

  ‘I don’t have the answer. Maybe Suryakant has something to say.’ Pandey looked at Suryakant.

  Suryakant’s phone was ringing constantly with Tendulkar’s and Shibbu’s calls. Perhaps they were impatient to know the final outcome: whose fortune star was going to shine? He switched off his mobile phone without irritation and said to Pandey with a miserable smile, ‘I have nothing to add.’

  25

  STORM OUTSIDE, MAELSTROM INSIDE

  The novel may end but there is much that remains to be expressed. Surya said to Pandey, ‘I have nothing to add.’ This is the last sentence of the novel. However, it is also possible that the author is unable to continue. Another perilous possibility is that the rest of the pages have been torn or they have decomposed or are lost. Or they may be samples of such inferior writing that the author himself has destroyed them. Anyway, I have certain other accounts, information and reports with the help of which one may fabricate their own favourite closing. But there is one thing: I am not a novelist that I should create a story or tale in a distinct narrative style. Weave incidents together to construct an interesting tale … I am simply a character in this book, Gauri, so I am presenting my matter in a straightforward manner, in fragments.

  1

  I woke up quite early. Although it was dark, I got out of bed and started sprucing up the house. Surya was returning from Sultanpur today; I wanted him to enter the house and admire it. Gaurav, I and the house should impress him so mightily that he should immediately forget the people of Sultanpur. He should be so engrossed with the present that he should not recall the past he left there. Naturally, I was smartening up the house, changing drapery and upholstery, instructing Garurav not to go to school. After all, a woman does not have a weapon more powerful than a child when she has to fence against the husband. When the arrival time of the Varuna Express drew near, I told myself, ‘I am an aggrieved woman in the words of the famous poetess, Mahadevi Verma, “I am a cloudlet of pain, full of tears.” And thus, I had altered into a miserable woman whose husband ignores her. I examined myself in the mirror, I really appeared like a woman in an awful plight, mistreated by the whole wide world. I was confident that Surya would not be able to bear my looking so despondent. He would attempt to make me laugh, please me, but I would feign anger. I would smile only when the painting of Sultanpur is wiped off the canvas of his heart.